


With Teeth

by dulce_de_leche_go



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Halloween, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Head Boys & Head Girls, Light Angst, Miscarriage, POV First Person, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Smut, Werewolf Draco Malfoy, Werewolf Hermione Granger, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Sex, not quite happily ever after, the woefilled diaries of a werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 19:53:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13724805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulce_de_leche_go/pseuds/dulce_de_leche_go
Summary: Halloween Creature Fic. Werewolf!Draco, EWE, mostly PWP. Infected during the war by Fenrir Greyback, Draco survived one struggle to find another. His return to Hogwarts and so-called “normal” life was a cute attempt to move on but, as always, one insufferable woman turns that on its head as well. Short story, dark setting, controversial themes. Draco 1st Person POV





	1. The Better to See You With

**Author's Note:**

> Another re-upload of an old Dramione werewolf fic I wrote for Halloween a few years ago. Very minor editing done in this one so please do take any craziness with a grain of salt. Hope you enjoy!

"No bloody way!"

"Miss Granger!"

" _NO!_ I'm sorry, Headmistress, but this is just insane! Is that why you made him Head Boy? So I could _keep an eye_ on him? No, absolutely not! I thought I was done being put in danger on the daily—"

"Miss Granger, please listen! He is not dangerous! He's been on the potion routinely since shortly after the war and hasn't had an incident since--"

"Oh, so he's had an incident before? _That's_ comforting! And here I thought the sacrifices I put forth actually meant something. Apparently, they just mean enough to lock me up with--"

"She's right," I interrupted tiredly.

My words were laced with obvious exhaustion and maybe that's what made her turn to me. Her curls whirled around her head, bouncing in her face before settling down and she turned those heated eyes to me. I suppose she thought to find a fight there, I couldn't blame her, there always had been before. Not today, though. I was just so tired today...not to mention this horrible headache. In an unfortunate bit of timing, the full moon was days away and the year had just started – never a dull moment around Hogwarts.

"Look, Malfoy," the petite witch started, readying herself for a battle, "she may be right about--"

" _NO_ ** _,_** you nit!" I growled, trying my hardest to ignore how it didn't sound wholly human. "You, _you’re_ right."

The fight bled out of her as quickly as it came. "Wait...what? Me?"

I rolled my eyes when she glanced around to McGonagall and then back to me. Pushing myself out of the plush armchair in front of the Headmistress' desk, I moved to the exit to stop wasting time with this lost cause.

"It's too dangerous, _I'M_ too dangerous. We'll just find me somewhere else to be locked up, chained down...or maybe throw me into the bloody forest, I don't fucking care anymore. I'm going to lay down, I can't think past this migraine. Good evening Headmistress." I paused at the stairwell and glanced over my shoulder to find the bossy bitch looking at me wide-eyed. I nodded at her, muscles too lethargic to even produce a sneer. "Granger."

Without waiting for a dismissal, I made my way down the staircase. Curse my newly refined senses, because moments after my exit I heard a soft, defeated voice echo in the room behind me.

_"I'll do it..."_

Fucking Granger...always the champion for lost causes.

 

* * *

"You've been taking your potion, Malfoy?"

I didn't need to hear the nervousness in her voice, I could smell it on her.

I glared at her before shoving past to make my way into the additional room – _my cage_ – that was added on to the Head's dorms through a lot of favors and a great deal of money so I could have a chance at finishing my education. The Professors involved with keeping my secret a secret, as well as the Headmistress herself, arranged my position as Head Boy alongside the "ever trustworthy" and "ever beloved" Granger on her own return to school.

The witch pitied me, I knew she did, she would never admit to it, but she did. It should have angered me, but instead I was just too fucking tired of this to care.

I shouldn't have been surprised when Greyback turned on me during the war. He never liked me anyway, though I doubt if he expected me to survive with how he left me broken and mauled on the castle's doorstep. If he had any idea...well, I don't think he would've given me “his gift” as he so grandly referred to it on several occasions.

"Yes," I snarled, a predatory part of me enjoying the way she flinched away. "For the billionth time, yes. You're safe. I won't bloody eat you...unless you continue irritating me. At that point you've only brought it on yourself."

To her credit, she managed a shaky laugh and pulled the barred door shut behind me. That was the inner door--all solid iron bars that would get locked by conventional and magical means; there was an outer one as well. The outer door was thick wood, smelled like oak, probably at least 10 centimetres thick, and it had a quaint little hinged window near the bottom. My doggy door? Fucking adorable.

I started to disrobe once in my barren little cell and heard her gasp behind me. When I turned to eye her again, she was looking away and a brilliant blush tinted her cheeks. I smirked to myself and continued to remove my shirt, shoes, socks, and trousers. Moonrise was near, I could feel it buzzing along my skin, the wolf already starting to awaken in its nearness, but I took my time folding my pile of clothes. There was no excuse for being sloppy and unkempt. Just another thing to separate me from... _it_.

"Here," I said gruffly.

Granger looked to me again and I couldn't tell if she was surprised at the new thickness to my voice or the fact that I was still wearing shorts. I watched her eyes hesitate, then dart down to peek. If possible, she was even more red at her curiosity. I passed my clothing to her through the bars and couldn't resist a lingering touch at her hand, just to throw her off. Imagine my surprise when she turned her hand to accept mine. A year ago, I would have drawn back in disgust from rubbing against a Mudblood, though blood wasn't really much of an issue anymore then, was it? Merlin knew mine was anything but clean nowadays. Funny thing, that.

"Malfoy--"

I blinked up at her face and knew I wore a confused look on mine. I expected to see her pity reflected back at me but that wasn't it at all. Her flush was gone and her lips pursed lightly in the way they did when she was focusing hard on something in class. Her eyes were steady, big...round... _full_ , much like my other mistress.

"If you need me...I'll be right outside."

I snorted at that. It was a defensive reaction because her tone still wasn't piteous, I'm not sure what it was, but I can admit – if only to myself – that it _was_ comforting.

"What am I to do, Granger? Call you? Not really going to have use of my full vocabulary here in a few minutes."

She released my hand then and shot me her very superior look that I was so used to seeing from years past.

"I'm sure you'll figure something out. You _are_ Head Boy, after all, you're supposed to be intelligent and whatnot."

I studied her in that moment and she did the most impossible thing and quirked her lips in the smallest of smirks. Granger traced her hands over one of the bars that separated us, her mouth turning down in a frown at them for a second as though she disliked their presence then sighed and shook that riotous head of hair.

"See you in the morning, Malfoy."

"Granger."

I nodded at her back and watched her disappear from view, only realizing she never shut the second door. For the first time since _ever_ , I had a budding worry in my gut. I hoped the potion would take effect quickly so I didn't try to do anything...questionable towards my warden. I've never had a woman watching over me before.

The bars would protect her...

Forbidden thoughts entered my head of my dark eyed mistress, too kind with those eyes. She left her scent all over the iron separating us and I growled, inhaling the calming fragrance, trying to think of ways I would call her back to me just as the wolf snarled in my ears and took me.

 

* * *

The first things that stirred me into wakefulness were a delicious aroma wafting past my nose and the cold stone under my bare shoulder.

I groaned and stretched my muscles--they always were a bit stiff in the mornings after. I grumbled when my stretch was interrupted by an equally cold and solid set of objects near the reaching path of my arms. Cracking one eye open, then the other, I peered out past the bars of my cage and the memories of where I was and the night before came slowly trickling in.

The change...it was painful, as it always was, but I did my best to stifle my cries. I hadn't been silent enough though, because my little wolfsitting witch came running with concern.

What the hell did she expect?

Months of this and it was never any easier no matter what I did. It wasn't a bloody picnic, surely she knew that...but the look in her eyes...still not pity. She'd looked as though she was keeping herself in line, keeping her feet rooted lest she breach the safety of the bars and come to...what? Hold me? _Pet me?_ I don't think she knew what she wanted to do either, but I knew she wanted to make it stop and she refused to leave, refused to turn away. She spoke with me through it all, leaned against my cage like a fool – I need only reach out and grab her if I fancied, then let's see if she still felt like she wanted to save me – and she tried her damnedest to soothe me.

_'It'll be alright, Malfoy,'_ she'd said, _'I'm right here.'_

Her scent had crept into my prison and she smelled like sandalwood and the stirrings of a cool Autumn morning; it was so curious and so distinct. Not that I've made it a point to be around many humans – _people_ – be around many people...during my times, but I don't think I'd smelled such a thing on a person before. Maybe it was a Muggle-born thing, Salazar knows I especially haven't spent much time around _them_.

I still don't understand what she wanted from me but--but it was appreciated. No one had ever stuck with me through it before and she was the last person I ever expected to do so.

My tired warden was snoozing in plain sight of my cage door now. She leaned against the wall with my pile of clothes in her lap and a tray of food at her side. The little witch sported pyjamas she must have changed into since I saw her last and the shirt was too large at the neck, falling off one shoulder. Her shorts were too short, riding up her thighs.

The back of my mouth stung at the sight of food – at least I think it was the food - a piece of steak, a pile of fluffy eggs, and a muffin sat neatly steaming on the tray. Saliva pooled in my cheeks, eager to have something after a long night of denying my wolf anything so his instincts didn't overpower my potion.

That was a misconception in and of itself, our potions, they weren't a quick fix like many thought. It would be one easily fixed but due to the nature of the social stigma against lycanthropes it was just something nobody spoke about – nobody wanted to end up on that damned registry if you'd managed to dodge it.

My potion was strong, I brewed it myself under the tutelage of Slughorn who, for as flighty as he sometimes was, was an absolutely brilliant potioneer. A week of the disgusting brew leading all the way up to the fateful moonrise was the dosage everyone knew, miss one and don't bank on it working out well for you or your loved ones. It didn't work like people thought, though. It gave me my mind on the nights when the wolf had my body, but his instincts were very much still there and also very insistent. I knew what he wanted, usually to hunt and kill, but sometimes there were other unsavory things that came with the territory of being an animal.

If anyone were to ask me, I would explain to them in the simplest terms the ways of unthinking animals: you fight, flee, feed, or fuck.

With the scent of sandalwood in my nose and the yearning to see what this fresh Autumn day _felt_ like, it was more important than ever that I kept my head last night.

Granger had no fondness for me. I was another beast to save from human persecution. But, when you keep yourself in isolation so long, it's amazing how quickly a burst of kindness goes to plant a seed.

Poor little witch...look what you've done.

I looked at her still sleeping, lightly snoring form with her modest chest rising and falling and a tiny smile curving her lips.

I wondered what a fresh Autumn day dreamt about.

My eyes were roving down her figure, lingering on the stretch of long legs and the petite painted toes capping them before making their way back up to the smooth expanse of neck and shoulder revealed by her slouchy shirt.

"Good morning."

The mumble startled me and I saw she'd opened her eyes finally. They were barely slits and heavily laden with sleep still, but they sparkled in the early morning light and met my face. She was still smiling lightly. Probably still mostly asleep because she was smiling at _me_.

"Morning..." I said carefully.

I realized, quite slowly, that I was sitting before her, nude, my shorts having shredded sometime in the night through the change. And she was still smiling at me...smiling with full lips and stretching like a cat in a sunbeam. I could hear faint pops from her joints as she worked them loose but was much more concentrated on the way her lifted arms also lifted the hem of that stupid shirt and I could see a glimpse of her belly, smooth and pale. Her little waist was too narrow but she made up for it in the way the rest of her flared into a pair of shapely hips atop those long -- _impossibly long_ \-- legs.

I think that I wasn't the only one that changed over the last year...and also, I was still naked.

I coughed to keep her attention at my face, shifting slightly to hide my significant problem from her. "...can I get my clothes?"

"Oh!"

Her smile faltered and it made me almost wish I hadn't asked. She flushed sheepishly and shifted to her knees, shuffling on them in a funny kind of waddle the scant few metres it took to close the distance to pass them to me between the bars.

"I'm sorry about that. I'll get this door open in a second as well, one second! I left my wand in the other room."

She stood before I had a chance to say anything else, coming to her feet in front of me, _right in front of me._ Those hips I'd been admiring passed near the bars, near my face and she thought nothing about turning on the balls of her feet _right there_ and giving me a wonderful glimpse of her bum – Gods those shorts were short.

Definitely not the only one that changed over the last year.

I dressed quickly and thought about everything I could under the sun that had nothing to do with what else changed with the little Mudblood--no, _Muggle-born_. Stones and glass houses and what all.

She reappeared, less jovial this time--more awake, no doubt--took down the wards then unlocked the door. Granger turned and bent at the waist to retrieve the tray – bloody fucking hell, this witch, this is what happens when you grow up around tossers that don't realize you're a fucking _woman_.

"I made--" She gasped because I was right there when she turned around and the last word came out breathlessly, "--breakfast."

I quirked an eyebrow at her reaction and smirked, taking the food from her, my fingers tracing over her knuckles before she transferred it to my grip. "I see that."

Granger met my eyes without fear and I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. I expected her to at least be looking at me as some sort of specimen to dissect, especially after seeing...well, seeing everything.

"I was hungry," she continued and didn't move away from me. She didn't even drop her hands from the tray even though I most obviously had it. She just looked at me the same way she had before and offered that little smile again. "And...and Professor Lupin used to tell me things like this help in the morning...after, well...y-you know."

Ah. There was something of an explanation then. I'd forgotten about the expired Professor and his condition.

My nostrils flared involuntarily at a sudden change in her scent. It's not as easy to identify these random smells as people think – another misconception – but there was a definite shift...not wholly unpleasant either. Perhaps there was another story there. Student and teacher lovers? No... there was no heady hint of her sex in the air – that one was _not_ a misconception and frustratingly easy to identify.

"Thanks."

"Oh, y-you're welcome..." That blush again. She nodded and finally realized we were both holding the food and hastily let go. Her little frame turned from me back in the direction of the kitchenette.

"Granger--"

"Yes?"

"Thank you." She opened her mouth to reply but I cut her off. "For last night."

Another smile for _me_.

"You're welcome, Malfoy."


	2. The Better to Hold You With

We'd become friends by now.

We shared many of the same classes and fought each other for top marks in most of them – just as we'd done before everything got complicated before the war. We also shared most of our patrols together. In part as a precaution that I'd say or do something that would reveal me -- as if I were quite that careless with my secret -- and in a larger part due to none of the upstanding little Prefects wanting to be left alone with me. Between that and our planning for various holiday feasts, our schedules were full of each other of late, especially the last week leading up to the full moon.

She was a most thorough warden.

So many months of the same routine, I should have known something would have to give at some point.

When my day would finally come, she would lock me in my cage, never closing the outer door, always looking at the bars with that same distaste as the very first time. These days she wouldn't even leave. She would stay with me there, on the other side, despite my protests and the hurtful words I'd sling at her to deter her. She would flinch at them but double back and meet me with more stubbornness than I'd ever been exposed to before.

She was on to me, I knew she was.

There's only so much, only so many private things you can share with a person before things start to change. I didn't want that for her. As much as I loathed her for all the wrong reasons while growing up, I'd never want it...never wish it on her. But she knew. I swear, women were animals without a curse or infection. They could smell your fear and your intentions across the hills.

"Draco."

We'd long since been on a first name basis, but it still sounded wonderful when she would say it. Just as good as the first time.

My bare back was pressed to the door of my cage, shorts providing a little bit of warmth from the cold floor. She'd long since lost her bashfulness about my nudity – no, that turned into something quite different and I wondered if she was aware I could tell. I still wore them though, maybe out of propriety...maybe because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't.

"Draco," she said again and I sighed, finally turning to look at her.

Fuck, Merlin, she was a sight. " _What_ , Granger?"

Her jaw tightened and lips pursed in my direction. She knelt in front of me, bracing herself with a hand on two of the bars between us. She sighed. Her breath was tinted with mint at this late hour and I hated her for how nice it felt to have it caress my skin.

"Granger again, is it?" she asked me softly with her cheek pressed adorably to the iron.

"S'always been," I replied petulantly.

She was too close and I could never think when she was that close. Not during this time anyway.

How funny that our cycles seemed to coincide most months, this being one of them.

Damn it all to hell, she was so good, so _ripe_ right now. My wolf – no, if I were to be honest, it was just as much _me_ – wanted to claim that ripeness for my own. That's precisely why I needed to fight to keep her "Granger" for now...for forever.

She did something she'd never done before in that moment, of course. Leave it to her to muck everything all up. I'm not entirely sure what set it in motion, but it was the day the dam broke, apparently. She whispered the words to dispel the lock on the door and, though she didn't open it yet, she reached through and ran a hand over my cheek. It lingered, cupping my face for several heartbeats and I'm sure I looked like an utter fool with the expression of shock I wore as she touched me. It crept back into my hair where she tugged me closer so our lips could meet.

My fresh Autumn day...she _tasted_ nothing like Autumn but fuck if I cared.

I came to my knees, hands darting out through the bars to wrap around her as best I could. I swallowed her gasp and fished for more, more of those little sounds, little moves, little ways she grabbed at me and forgot there was an entire door separating us. I growled into her mouth when her hands danced over my bare stomach and forced myself to pull away, and rather violently at that.

Emotions.

Emotions weren't good this close to moonrise.

I could feel the wolf shifting in the back of my mind, snarling in my head, and he was suddenly very interested in my warden. My potion was in place but you just never knew, there was never a guarantee on these things...

I pushed away from the floor and stalked to the other side of the room, leaning against the far wall with its single little window – also barred and very high up. My chest was heaving for breath and not all of it was entirely due to our kiss. I blinked up to see what I already felt: the sky was dark and the moon was out.

"Lock the door!" My ears were ringing alongside the blooming pain in my body as the telltale grinding of bones sounded off. Even then, I could pick out the new gravelly timbre to my words.

"No." Her response was immediate, firm, and calm as anything.

Fucking idiot! Fucking foolish witch!

She'd been through this too many times to be terrified and her scent confirmed she was anything but.

She still smelled of sandalwood...of Autumn...and right now, her sex.

I groaned pathetically, sinking to my knees with my head in my hands. My spine cracked and struggled against my human skin, it felt like it was going to rip straight through, scorching from the inside out.

_"Please...Hermione..."_

My whimpered plea made it to her. I could tell because she choked out a saddened cry in response.

I couldn't think anymore beyond the pain.

Hands and feet curled and stretched into claws in a way that was less than harmonious--cracking and bleeding, snapping into appropriate positions for the filthy beast I was.

My tongue and my teeth felt huge in my mouth until, with angry cracks and pops from my jaw, it stretched into something more suitable to accommodate.

My joints groaned in protest at the change.

My muscles swelled and thickened, weighing down heavily around my chest and hips and thighs until all at once the bones there snapped and exploded to support them in their new form, savage and lupine, tearing a wrecked howl of agonized pain from my throat.

The burning of my flesh didn't subside and I panted desperately, clawing at it, every single bit of it, until rivulets of my blood were finally flowing and cooling the surface. It only eased finally when layers upon layers of black, gray, and white fur sprouted from my thickened hide and swallowed my last vestiges of humanity. Sound returned then in a sudden, overpowering wave in my new ears.

Granger's heart was pounding, the blood pumping steadily through her veins and, thank Merlin, the urge to rip them open was suppressed, but heaven help me because it was _there_ at all. She sounded so close and I wanted to scream at her to get away. I couldn't say the words anymore but my black lips peeled back and a growl trickled from my throat at the thought anyway.

Then I felt her arms around me.

She's lucky I didn't turn and slash her throat open with my claws then.

Of course I’d already known what she was going to do the second she unlocked that fucking door so when her arms wrapped around my waist it wasn't a surprise.

The stupid bitch...

Stupid woman...

My stupid Autumn day...

My stupid Hermione.

Her arms tightened as my breathing calmed from the fresh transformation. My mind was my own, but she had no idea how much I was still restraining myself from taking her right then.

 _That_ would have surely changed her mind about everything, I'm certain.

I _didn't_ take her – thankfully. And so she stood there, holding me, crying into my back and soaking my pelt.

"I'm staying with you..."

I snarled at her over my shoulder in protest, claws digging into the wall before me where I braced my weight and hers as she leaned into me.

"Shut it," she snapped but her heart wasn't in it.

I felt her cheek nuzzle against me, her already small hands, even smaller against my now huge frame, soothing along my chest. For a smart witch, she most certainly didn't seem familiar with mating habits of wolves or she wouldn't be so quick to touch and rub, smelling as she did. That scent...that fucking amazing scent mingling with mine penetrated my nose and made me want to ravage her and hide her away from everyone else all at once.

I'd take her, mark her for mine, and then mate my _so ripe_ bitch repeatedly until her belly swelled with our babes.

Fuck...those weren't the thoughts of a normal human man...I was a damned monster.

"Let me stay with you," she whispered and I slumped with her attached to me, still refusing to look her in the eyes, still afraid – terrified – of what I might do, more so now than before.

She never left me. She held me through the night and miraculously my resolve didn't crumble.

Once upon a time, I would have balked at being held like a child.

Now...well, things change over the years, I suppose.

 

* * *

"Reckless?! How do you bloody figure?!"

"Wha—are you REALLY asking me that?! I could have fucking _KILLED_ you, Granger! Or infected you at the least! Actually...no, you know I'm not entirely sure which is worse of those two outcomes."

I didn't mean to yell at her.

My morning started out nice enough with the sun trickling in from my small window and Hermione's small body heating my back – I was the little spoon; _cute_. Her arm was slung over my waist and her cheek pressed to my bare flesh. Her breathing was even and sweet on my skin. I was drowning in her and it would've been so easy to just accept it, but she'd scared me last night.

Stupid... _stupid_ woman...

Hermione looked hurt but pressed on, as she always did.

"You wouldn't have! You didn't! If you had, I wouldn't be having to listen to your idiotic objections!"

"Idiotic?!" I snarled and it would have been funny since I was still nude and all, but I knew from the way her lip trembled that the look on my face was anything but.

I grabbed her wrists and shoved her against the wall of my cell, growling into her face so maybe she would finally get the point that I was dangerous.

"How's _this_ then? Is this idiotic? I could kill you NOW. I could still rip your fucking throat out without having to wear the wolf's skin!" To further illustrate, I came at her quickly, my teeth a hair's breadth away from the join of her neck and shoulder.

Therein lie my mistake.

I fucked up.

I fucked up and nothing would ever be the same again.

A strangled noise of pleasure made it past my lips. I was too close to her skin too soon after my transformation.

"Gods...do you know what you _smell_ like, Hermione?"

Her breath was coming in fast little gasps, heart thundering against her ribcage like the frightened little bird she was. Except she wasn't really frightened, now was she? Of the myriad scents coming off her skin, fear was _not_ one of them.

"Tell me," she rasped out, arching into me and turning her head to the side in a way that was so submissive all of my animal instincts came roaring to the surface, my wolf rumbling as it stirred.

I released her wrists and hoisted her up into my arms, pressing my lips to her ear in a voice that was barely my own anymore.

"You...you smell of wood...burning...spicy, musky, sweet. You're the morning...fresh, after the rain. Crisp and cool like a sharp breeze...delicious like an orchard in bloom."

My words were harsh, the tone abusive like I wanted to make her pay for driving me wild like she did, but she never once faltered. The bitch was right. The very last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. In fact, that thought didn't even exist in my body at the moment, though the ones that _did_ were much more depraved.

"And _this_ ," I ground out, shifting her in my arms to drag a finger along her clothed core, her hands clenching at my shoulders. "This...is like a heady, _rich_ chocolate made just for me."

She whimpered desperately, the noise prickling down my spine and testing my hold on my human faculties. I moved her to the floor where she pawed at me eagerly and her own frantic needs made me fumble with those fucking too-short shorts until I mangled them _and_ her knickers.

I found the sweet spot on her neck, just behind her ear, where she smelled the most like mine and snarled against her flesh.

"Tell me it's mine."

_"Yes."_

I positioned myself at her entrance and she was as ready for me as I was for her.

"Tell me _you_ are mine." My voice was hardly more than a growl.

She mumbled her reply with a quivering breath and I heard her, but I wanted it louder – I would have her scream it so there was nothing left to the imagination.

I took the lobe of her ear between my teeth and worried the flesh there until she arched more sharply.

**_"Again!"_ **

Hermione keened deliciously beneath me when my tip parted her folds.

_"Yours! Only you—Draco please-"_

And just like that, any chance of maintaining control snapped cleanly in twain.

I thrust into her in one firm, rough stroke and the cry it freed was not of pain. I silenced her mouth with mine, taking everything she had because she belonged to me. My hips met hers repeatedly with frantic thrusts and her nails latched into my back. Her legs clamped at my waist and she hung on desperately while I fucked the ever-loving pixies out of her.

She was a million times better than I could ever have imagined – and I often _had_ imagined.

Her gasps and mewls and moans of pleasure sang to me, reverberated in my blood and bones, stringing every tendon in my body tighter than a bow. Everything about the way she writhed and moved and submitted herself to me pushed me to the edge, the need to dominate her completely creeping into the fringe of my consciousness.

At once, her back lifted clean off the floor and she ripped lines down my sides in the suddenness of her orgasm. Her head dropped back to the stone, hair splayed around her in a fantastic wild halo and her delicate muscles clamped down like a vice, strangling me with relentless fervour.

There weren't words for what I was thinking, I was beyond thought at that point. I simply saw her there, body arched, smelling of Autumn woods and warm sun with her muscles shuddering around me and I acted the way the snarling beast in me demanded.

My jaws found her bared shoulder easily and immediately to more firmly pin her beneath me but my teeth sank into the meat and punctured her skin. I clamped down around her flesh as an anchor, never was it the intention to hurt, just the desire to claim as I pumped my hips until I was emptying into her, filling her to the brim as I'd longed to for weeks now.

My muscles twitched, shudders and shivers running all through me at the tinny tang of her blood on my tongue.

We both froze, still as stone.

In that instant, the passionate heat that existed between us in my modest cage bled from existence and in its stead, came the harsh, biting cold of reality.

Trembling, my iron grip on her loosened so I could pull my face away to look at her. She did well by not screaming in horror at her blood smearing my lips and chin. Those big brown eyes of my Hermione were impossibly larger and even now, as the muscles of our nethers still twitched in the aftermath of our coupling, those fucking beautiful eyes were finally rounded in fear.

Hermione's fear was a bittersweet taste on my tongue and I felt foul for knowing its profile.

Her gaze darted over my face, probably trying to make sense of what happened. That awful taste accompanying its smell flooded my being and made my eyes water when she realized the magnitude of it all. A thousand things flashed through her too gods-damned expressive eyes then: shock, understanding, terror, anger, betrayal.

I couldn't...I just couldn't see her look at me like that.

I set her down as gently as one could post-ravaging and withdrew from her heat.

Scrambling, I went in search of clothing – something to wrap her in and shorts for my dignity. I returned shortly after and she was still sitting there awkwardly on the stone floor, one hand pressed to the wound I'd inflicted to staunch the blood. It wasn't deep, it was a love bite after all, but I'd broken the skin...the chance that I'd...

"You bit me..." she said shakily, examining the traces of red on her fingertips while I wrapped her in a robe.

Much to my surprise, her tone wasn't accusatory, but more in wonder. It was as though she never fathomed this possibility. I _told_ her I was dangerous. I was a fucking time bomb waiting--just _waiting_ for the worst possible moment to blow.

"Hermione," I started just as nervously, "I—I.."

"D-do you think...I mean...am I?" It was a question a brilliant witch like her knew the answer to already, but trauma did funny things to people.

I swallowed, the weakness in her voice was tangible and heart wrenching and I wanted to hold her and chase away the threat – except for the fact that _I_ was the threat. I forced myself to kneel slowly and carefully near her, within arm's reach if she wanted me, far enough away if she didn't.

"I... you won't ch-change," I stammered. Honesty was best with her, even if it would damn me forever. "You may...you may have some _tendencies_...but...you won't be like--"

"Like you," she finished and looked at me sharply, her eyes much more cognizant with a new weight to them.

Eventually her stare left me. I felt like I could breathe again, but silence formed between us. Neither of us made a move to leave my cell. That silence was suffocating.

"Hermione I'm so--"

"Don't--" she snapped but both her expression and her tone softened into a weary one. "Please don't. I should have known...I'm not stupid...I should have anticipated--"

" _No!_ " It was my turn to interject. "You shouldn't have anticipated anything because it's not your fault! Don't you shoulder this as yours for one fucking second. It's me, Granger...it's always been me..."

She sat there and I saw her head bob, the only acknowledgment that she heard me. My heart broke for her then. We hadn't even had a chance to start and we were already broken before we began. The thought of it disgusted me...my reverse Midas touch.

Staring at my broken girl, I made up my mind to do what should have been done from the start.

I picked myself up off the cold floor and stalked to the entrance of my cage.

Hermione blinked out of her daze at my sudden movements and questioned me. "Draco? Draco, where are you—HEY!"

I was past the threshold and slamming the bars back into place, scrambling for my wand in a pile of my things to lock and ward it in time. Her hands wrapped around the iron and that hurt look was turned to me again, this time the anger and outrage there was multiplied tenfold.

"I'm sorry," I said finally without her to stop me.

"Open this door! Draco Malfoy, you open this door this instant!"

I shook my head frantically and resisted reaching for her. I ached to touch her and the wolf in my head was making an awful racket at what it knew I was about to do. It was savagely protesting my plan to leave its mate.

"I'm sorry," I repeated.

I rifled through and tugged on the rest of my clothing until I was mostly presentable and I felt my breathing coming faster, nearly in pants now. The overgrown dog was rattling its cage, clawing at the walls, chomping at the bit. It was howling in my head and I needed to leave her before I physically couldn't.

"I'll send an owl to McGonagall after I'm gone to let you out. It won't be long—I promise it won't be long."

At my frantic movements, eyes flitting about to be sure I had all that I needed to make my getaway, Hermione lost some of her rage.

"Draco," she coaxed. " _Please_...please don't do this! I was just...I was in shock. I'm alright—please, I'm sorry--"

"NO!" I roared, coming to face her again, melting into a pathetic nearly sobbing and hyperventilating mess. My hands came up to cup her face through the bars and I stole my last touches because I was a weak, miserable man. "You don't get to apologize to me... _I'm_ so sorry Hermione."

She leaned into my touch and tried to keep me there but I jerked away before she could draw me in.

"Draco!" she cried. "Don't you fucking leave me!"

"I'm sorry." I shook my head, half at her words and half trying to dislodge the animal urging me to give up this plight and just fuck her again because that was just so much simpler. "Sorry...so so sorry. I’m sorry..."

My hands clawed through the tousled mop atop my rapidly shaking head, taking several blond tufts with them.

"DRACO!"

I stumbled. I stumbled and then I ran as far away as I could get because, of everything that had changed, I was still a fucking coward.

I ran from my poor caged bird...my sweet Autumn day...my precious Hermione...

**_"DRACO!"_ **

Her sobs haunted my dreams for years.

 


	3. The Better to Hear You With

It was going on a year now since I left my country, much more than a handful since I left  _ her _ . I'd simply tried to keep running but when your girlfriend was an Auror, it was difficult to hide.

_ Girlfriend _ .

I guess that's what she was...or what she would have been anyway, had I not ran like the wretch I was.

My sources told me that she'd finished her studies – top of the class of course – and went on to become an Auror instead of working in the Magical Creatures division like she'd been aiming for initially. I guess she didn't want to be surrounded by reminders of what I'd done.

There wasn't a day that passed I didn't think of her and long for her at my side. I needed her with me under the warmth of the sun and I wanted her at night, during the moons, pressed against me like she was wont to do.

I'd finally come to terms with the fact that there was no wolf "inside" me, it was all just me now. 

That creature I'd pretended was another being entirely was just another side of myself. It'd been too many years to separate us anymore and what was once exclusive to it had long since bled into my thinking human mind. 

I'd like to say that it went the opposite way as well, that my humanity colored its choices and thoughts, but that was hardly the case without my potion. If anything, it only became worse with her absence as though my beastly side was rebelling at the fact I wouldn't go to see our bitch--my bitch...my woman, I mean—girlfriend...my  _ mate _ .

I couldn't. I missed her but she didn't deserve more of the burden I already forced on her.

I didn't know how bad it was for her. I wasn't in my other form when I bit her, so I didn't lie, she  _ wouldn't _ change...but sometimes the side effects could be nearly as bad. 

There wasn't much open discussion about lycanthropy and its various degrees of infection, but the few individuals I'd been able to trust had provided me with horror stories of the ranges of symptoms. It could be as subtle as a craving for raw meats, particularly around the full moon, or heightened hearing, sight, or smell. It could also be terrible enough to drive some to madness. The needs of the savage animal inside the infected would become pressing and incessant, overpowering but without the physical release of a changing body and if they didn't find an outlet then it would consume them. 

I prayed to every deity I believed in and some I didn't that my bite hadn't infected her at all. Then I stopped my wishful thinking and just prayed that she would barely notice its effects and she would be alright.

I did my best  _ not _ to think of her, lest I drive myself mad, but it was a losing battle.

I removed myself from Britain because she wouldn't stop searching for me. Every time I would think I was clear, I would catch the whiff of my sweet Autumn day on the wind and she was close so I would have to move again. 

I was still a coward. 

I didn't want to know what she had to say to me. I didn't want her to try to make it work. She didn't deserve that and so I kept running, eventually finding myself here, in some secluded little Muggle town in the northern part of the United States in a place called  _ "Wisconsin." _

The woods here were dense where I managed to settle. It seems Wizarding to Muggle, British to American, money was truly an international language that spoke volumes – enough of it and you would get what you need. I wrangled myself a nice cabin away from people with a bit of a commute into the nearest proper peppering of civilization. 

Despite my years hiding amongst Muggles I still hadn't learned how to operate their vehicles, so I walked where I had to and  _ apparated  _ everywhere else. The only real drawback of living here was even though I rarely ventured into the city, the people I interacted with recognized me. I suppose the stark white-blond hair and crystalline gray eyes must not be a typical Muggle trait by the way their stares would follow me as I ambled about the quaint shopping aisles picking through their selection of crisps and lackluster tea or occasionally doing odd jobs involving physical labor.

Rarely did anyone ever speak to me here and, for the most part, I kept to myself. My appearances in front of people were so sporadic that sometimes took me longer than others to respond to conversation outside of business transactions.

It was after dark, days before the next full moon, when it happened in the quiet general store.

"Excuse me?"

I jumped ever so slightly and turned my head in the direction of the voice that was very clearly projected at me. 

I'd sensed her nearby, of course, just never expected anyone to stop and speak to me. 

She had a reasonably tolerable odor...it was no sinful piece of chocolate or delicate breeze, but at least it wasn't a fake, flowery, migraine inducing scent like some of the other female population in this place. I stared at her a bit harshly, inspecting her for what must have been a long while because she started to fidget. She was a short woman – at least a whole head shorter than I – brunette, a bit thin but with a heart shaped face and dark, expressive eyes.

"Pardon?" I asked evenly.

"Sorry." Her round cheeks pinked under my scrutiny. "I was just wondering if you might reach that for me?"

I felt an eyebrow tracking a slow, skeptical path up my forehead but I looked behind me in the direction she pointed to see a box of instant cocoa at the top of an otherwise empty shelf, the highest on the fixture. The box was cocked at a funny angle and I had a sneaking suspicion it was a result of her batting at it and failing in her attempts at knocking it into her mitts.

My mouth twitched into a smirk at the thought and I walked to the shelf, reaching for the box and placing a hand on it easily. I looked down over my shoulder at the woman who was biting at the edge of her lower lip in a way I'd found so fascinating on another sometime not so long ago. If anyone were to ask me then, I would've denied it, but the truth was, she reminded me of  _ her _ .

"And what, pray tell, might I get in return for offering my assistance?" Even as I said it, I plucked the cocoa from the shelf and turned, holding the box hostage until her answer.

She responded by offering me a coy smile, fluttering long eyelashes at me in a way I'm sure was supposed to be flirtatious. She placed a hand carefully over her prize and I watched her eyes scan from my face down the length of me and back in a languorous fashion. The woman had a sly look to her as she reached into the front pocket of her tight Muggle jeans and fished out a tiny piece of paper. She moved the cocoa from my hand and set the paper in it instead, her fingertips brushing over my palm in an extended touch before she winked at me and turned to head away down the aisle.

I waited until she'd gone from my sight before I eyed the paper, unfolding it to reveal a series of numbers scribbled onto it and a name written above that read " _ Laurie. _ " 

I read it a few times until I realized that it was a number for those telephone things they use to call one another in lieu of the Floo. Chuckling to myself I checked down the aisle both ways but she was already gone.

I was wrong, women weren't like animals, they were far too calculating for that comparison. They possessed too much of a self-serving, nefarious cunning that simply didn't exist in the animal kingdom.

Shaking my head, I gathered the items I'd come for, paid for my goods, and was on my way out, ready to toss the paper into the rubbish bin outside, when the image of a chocolate brown gaze flickered through my mind. My hand hovered by the bin, hesitating, and as though it would guide me, I sighed up at the sky. I latched onto the sight of the moon instantly, already so fat and heavy. Seeing her like that made my skin break out in goosebumps and I could feel her pull even now. My mind wandered to my Hermione and I wondered what my poor broken girl felt when she saw our lady in the sky.

It was with that thought that I shoved the number into my pocket.

Perhaps...perhaps it was time to stop thinking of the past.

 

* * *

Laurie would never have worked out. 

We didn't, as a matter of fact. 

She was very enamoured with my accent more than anything else about me, I think. At least that's what I gathered from what little conversation she was able to provide. She'd apparently been tracking me for a little while over several of my sparse visits into town when her opportunity finally arose – clever girl. I'd never noticed her specifically, myself. I really didn't care to commit any of these people to memory, but after my experience with her I thought to change that course of action a bit.

I took her out for coffee and lunch a few times leading up to the day of the full moon, which during each instant she made it quite clear she was out to fuck me. I'd not been with a woman since... _ that day _ , and the risks of infecting a Muggle were too great. Werewolves were just creatures of myth, legend, and fantasy to them, not at all based in truth. If I slipped up and exposed one to the reality of it all, the consequences could be dire. Most Muggles died from true werewolf attacks though, their systems more delicate than us wizarding lot, but I wasn't sure if my human bite would have the same effect. It wasn't something you experimented with.

Unfortunately for me, I was a weak man. 

I made my paltry excuses as to why I was unavailable the one night with promises that we could get together the day following. My urges were always that of a healthy male and they just so happened to be doubled, tripled maybe, during  _ my time of the month. _ Hermione made a joke about it once or twice, teasing that I looked at the girls in class like I was going to devour them. In truth, it was always just her that received those looks. I would have fucked her on the dais in the Great Hall for all to see if she would've let me. Stake my claim in front of the entire student body and faculty so everyone would understand she was mine...but I digress. 

I discovered it was more difficult to corral my thoughts around the full moon and I fell prey to certain urges again when silly little Lauren invited me back to her abode.

There was little preamble and the sun was high in the sky when I took her and to my surprise, the urge to do anything aside from just fucking her was curiously absent. Her hands gripped at my arms, she made these rather horrible screeching noises, her quim was hot and tight and welcoming, but she didn't instill in me the desire to utterly  _ ravage _ her. After emptying myself into the unpleasant rubber sleeve she required me to wear I was quite done with her...very awkwardly so at that.

It turned out Laurie wanted to keep me, possibly just for more sex seeing as how her personality was so utterly dull and she'd barely tried to learn anything about mine. Not to mention that I was a bloody werewolf and that just wouldn't be something I trusted this silly bint with. I couldn't have that, not any of it. After I'd realized my grave error I made a hasty decision to  _ obliviate _ her and remove that entire encounter from her memory. Alternately, I provided her with the false memory of my completely shoving away her attempts and hurting her delicate feelings like a prick like me does and made sure that each time she was to encounter me in town after that, she would send me nothing but scowls and distasteful looks – for the record, it was very effective.

While that specific encounter fell very flat, it did make me realize a few things I thought would help to stave off my loneliness and misery in the little town so far away from the woman I wouldn't allow myself to have.

One, despite that I still acted on my ill-advised coupling with the Muggle woman, I was much more easily able to control myself when it came to women that  _ weren't _ Hermione Granger.

Two, the physical release did wonders to settle the frantic needs of my animal nature. I held tight to my mind thanks to my potion each month, but even with the freedom to walk the woods of my property, I still denied the desires to hunt and kill and feed in my other form. Perhaps indulging just a teensy bit in  _ some _ of my instincts would make my days more palatable.

And three, the American Ministry for Magic had not yet noticed my existence in this secluded Muggle town. That or my number of infractions were minor and infrequent enough to require no warning, though I suspected the first. I could feasibly get away with a new woman each month and have them forget all about me on the intimate level. 

No strings. I could have my cake and eat it too.

The third realization was the only one that the snarling in my head seemed to quiet at. The thought of bedding another – one that wasn't  _ her _ – made that possessive lupine part of myself immensely unhappy. I'll admit to having been surprised at the attachment it had made to the witch, though in retrospect, between classes, rooming together, and keeping me company every single full moon night it's little of a surprise that some form of bonding had occurred. 

Ignoring every instinct telling me not to, I decided to indulge. At least if I did take another that wasn't my beautiful Autumn day, I wouldn't have to bother with the bitch hanging off of me afterward. It was a small saving grace that me, myself, and I could all appreciate.

So, there was the plan, then. Surely, what could go wrong?

 

* * *

The months prattled on and the hardest time of year came upon me again. 

My perfect plan worked not well at all but I'd persisted with it until October came about.

With each new girl, a part of me hoped to garner a degree of peace from the superficial encounter. It shouldn't have been surprising that it didn't happen that way at all, not even close. If anything, each time was less fulfilling than the one before. I'm fairly sure as a result from my frustrations while I corrected their memories, the majority of the small female population within my age range that resided there loathed my existence any time I made my way to the butcher or general store.

Oh well.

As I bottled my newest brew of wolfsbane potion into a vial for each of the upcoming days I thought of the women I'd bedded. With each face that crossed my mind a deeply seated ache in my chest pulsed.

_ Big brown eyes... _

_ Petite slender frame... _

_ Curly brown hair... _

_ Plump lips with a perfectly pronounced cupid's bow... _

Growling to myself in a sudden fit of hopelessness I snatched up one of the seven vials and hurled it across the room.

I hadn't moved on at all.

Of course I hadn't.

Every single one of the Muggles reminded me of her in some way. I knew what I was doing even through my fierce denials. In these days edging up to the October moon, I just couldn't pretend anymore that I was doing anything other than imagining they were  _ her _ .

As I glared hard at my foul potion streaking down my kitchen wall, I realized I'd just destroyed a vital portion of the only thing left to keep myself in check. My eyes widened and my pulse raced for an entirely different reason then as I hurried back to my cauldron to see if there was anything left of my brew.

Of course there wasn't.

The potion was delicate and difficult to create and had to be brewed and bottled as close to use as possible for it to be wholly effective. Not only was it simply a pain to make, it took several days as well. All doses were needed for it to work and I'd just disposed of one and left myself no time to create another batch.

I think it was in that moment that I finally broke.

My chest was shaking and it would be several minutes before I noticed that I was laughing – quite madly – at the entire situation. Then, as suddenly as my psychotic laughter came, it stopped in favor of a burning rage that filled me from head to toe. I launched myself at the remainders of my potions and went about redecorating my walls with the acrid, ugly concoction.

Once my vials were all properly shattered, I went about tossing my cauldron through a window and methodically splintering my furniture, doors, and door frames, opting out of a good _bombarda_ in favor of stretching my muscles and using my fists instead. Outside of my odd jobs in town, I had rare occasion to take advantage of my enhanced strength and toughened hide...but this, **_THIS_** was fucking glorious.

Snarling out all of my red-hot anger, I annihilated anything I didn't like the look of that existed in my home in those following moments, all the while hearing the gnashing of teeth and echoes of growls in the back of my head cheering me on. Once I'd finally finished with my tantrum my chest and shoulders were heaving from the exertion and I took in great gulps of air to replenish my limbs.

On my inhale, the night's breeze through my shattered window caught in my nose and I froze:  _ petrichor _ .

Frantically, I clambered to my door, ripping it open and scented the air. 

It hadn't rained recently and it was well past the first days of Autumn. There was no reason for that smell to be in the air. I looked around excitedly until—again! There! Just the faintest hint of cool crisp air after the rain...the scent of apples in an orchard...a lightly sweet, musky, burning wood...and something I'd never smelled before wrapped around the others like a Christmas ribbon, making even their barely there scents all the more inviting and compelling.

I jerked my head in the direction I thought it all came from. I followed for several paces, nostrils flared and eyes wide open to take in as much light as I could as I moved further into the wood, probably looking just as insane as I felt. I tracked that scintillating smell until it faded, circled back to find its stronger notes, then again, and _ again, _ **_and AGAIN_ ** – a fucking dog chasing its tail.

I'd lost it.

_ 'Perhaps it was just your imagination,' _ a traitorous voice inside my head offered.

I'd lost it...or it was never there. 

Either of these options made that deep ache return and I sank to my knees in a kind of anguish that came on swiftly and was all consuming. I crumpled at the loss of that comforting scent, hands clenching at my hair, looking desperately for some kind of grounding sensation to distract me. I tried to focus on the sharp pain that came with nearly ripping clumps of my blond locks from my scalp but the only thing I could think of was **_I'd lost her._ **

I'd lost her a long time ago in truth. 

I made that stupid decision to run the first time and keep running all the times after. How long had it been now? Nearly a decade maybe...almost ten years ago, I left her in that cell and I'd continued to flee from her pursuit. I thought I was doing us both a favor leaving the country but that amazing scent...my beautiful Autumn day...all it did was bring me to the truth.

All this time I was hoping she would still find me...because I am a coward...and I needed my Hermione to save me.

With the teasing of what was likely just the actual Autumn breeze sending my senses into a frenzy, coupled with my memory of her and the resulting misery at the fact that there would be no one to save me here, I felt the loss of my mate once again. It pulled at my heartstrings and made the acid in my stomach churn and bubble into my throat.

Tears leaked from my eyes with a pitiful sob and a sad kind of whine crept free from my throat at the old wound of my loss, ripped open to turn rancid and raw. Unthinking, I turned my head up violently and released a sorrow filled howl into the otherwise silent night. It was long, low, and completely inhuman. Perhaps I'd have been concerned at the fact that such a noise shouldn't come from a human throat, but I was too busy mourning my love to care. I filled my lungs easily, repeatedly, and loosed more until I was completely drained of my misery, pretending that such a thing would bring her back to me.

Spent and emotionally frayed, I curled up in a nearby pile of dried and fallen leaves that smelled just a little like fresh Autumn. 

It was cold, positively frigid that night, but I found it difficult to care. Maybe the cold would take me in my sleep, although my body burned like a furnace with its lycanthropic infection so it was highly unlikely. It was a morbidly kind thought in any case. No matter...I was so exhausted...I wasn't going anywhere that evening regardless of the probable outcomes.

I fell asleep in that sweet memory of fresh Autumn with howls echoing in my ears.

 


	4. The Better to Eat You With

I didn't die that night. Obviously.

Unexpectedly, I woke up rather refreshed.

A good manly cry ensured that I slept heavily throughout the night, that and the memories of my lady. Melodic howls lulled me to sleep, though I wasn't sure if they were all in my head or if they belonged to others in my wood. I'd made my presence known to the few wolves that kept their home at the edge of my land and established our lines quite clearly very early on. They ended up being quite pleasant neighbours in all honesty – kept their shit off my property and left me the hell alone, those are the best kind. Either way, they weren't threatening or even in my exhaustion I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep.

It had been an extremely long time since I'd suffered through a full moon without the use of my potion, so long it may as well have been a lifetime. I had completely forgotten how wonderful I felt without the brew lingering in my system, dampening my senses. Sounds were clearer, smells were crisper and cleaner, everything was much sharper to my keen eye.

It truly was amazing.

The biggest downside was all of my favorite biscuits and crisps tasted bland and ashy because they weren't juicy chunks of raw, bloody meat. Even the thought of the comparison made my mouth water and I knew then that I'd have the unfortunate need to go into town and make a visit to the butcher in order to satisfy that craving. It would be a daunting task, passing through the gauntlet of all the women I'd convinced to hate me, but a task that needed to be done.

 

* * *

My visit went swimmingly, much to my surprise, and I was able to procure heavy bags of Earl's best cuts of cow and pig – bone in when the option presented itself – enough to feed a small army. I hoped it would be enough to last me the rest of the days until my change. There was no telling what I would do that fateful night and in complete honesty, I didn't fucking care.

I was beyond caring anymore.

The tears I shed drained me of all I had left.

They were foolish tears, as I had brought this outcome upon myself, but it didn't matter because I was _done_. I would let my wild will carry me where it would and find where it left me in the morn.

I'd tried, in my own pathetic ways, to be a man that would eventually learn to stop running, one that would be fit and had enough of his shit together to perhaps be a man that could be worth something to his lady.

That failed utterly, however, because I was still a failure.

Who knows if I actually tried hard enough?

It was no matter because I wasn't truly a man anyway, now was I?

I was a wolf, trying to be respectable and sensitive and careful...but I was still a _wolf_ . I'd left my cunning and slyness in a chest in the attic when I attempted to reform myself into a desirable being. I turned away my passion and fire for careful plodding and planning. I hid my teeth and suppressed my instincts and needs to be _normal_ \--to be a man that my sweet bird would want.

Well...I wasn't a man...I was a wolf.

A wolf was much more liable to eat a sweet bird than he was to romance it, even if it hadn't given up and silenced her song for him.

A wolf I would be, then. No more denying it.

Nearly ten years and I still hadn't managed, no sense in continuing this foolishness.

I would take what I wanted and dominate the opposition.

That is, after all, what a wolf would do.

 

* * *

"This is nice!"

"Thank you." I smirked at the Little Red Riding Hood giving herself a tour of my recently repaired living room.

Apparently, of all the brilliant ideas I had, my 'best' to date was surely lounging around town during the day of Halloween – also coincidentally the day of the full moon – and convincing this sweet little morsel to come home with me. I wasn't sure who was more foolish of the two of us, but with the way that short frilly petticoat skimmed her thighs, I wasn't into giving it too much thought.

I lifted Little Red from the town's big costume ball and though it was still early in the evening, she was already well into her cups. I supposed there wasn't an awful lot to do there otherwise. I saw her from across the room with that startling shade of red draped over her shoulders and a barely there red and white checkered dress whose bodice practically strangled her bosom to the point it was doing everything it could to escape. Even from that distance I could see a glimpse of arse where it met deliciously at the thickness of her thighs, though her pale skin disappeared beneath the cover of white thigh high leggings held in place with some very obvious red garters. She _did_ look absolutely delicious.

The humor of the situation was not lost on me.

The drunk bird had cheekily asked me what I was supposed to be dressed as wearing a regular gray suit. I just as cheekily replied _"a werewolf, but the moon isn't out yet"_ and she thought I was absolutely _hysterical_. Her laugh was admittedly pretty horrible and grated on my sensitive hearing, but she had the most entrancing chocolate tresses all done up in tight spiral curls. She wouldn't be making those noises for what I needed her for anyway.

It was with very little persuasion that she came back with me and was drunk enough she didn't think to ask why we had to taxi back to my cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere instead of me driving us there in my nonexistent vehicle.

"So." She turned to me, her straw basket swinging idly where it hung off her arm, and smiled. "Is that the bedroom up there?"

I followed the motion of her eyes to glance up my staircase and smiled back with all of my teeth.

"Perhaps. I may offer a tour of the upper level a bit later, love, but I thought we might sit and chat down here for a bit first."

I did my best to be charming and smooth, though I could feel the thrall of the moon nudging at the corners of my mind. Its power buzzed along my skin even though moonrise wasn't for another couple hours yet. There should be just enough time for me to have this one and then lock her away while I walked my wood, free of my human flesh. I'd still have to _obliviate_ her in the morning like the others, but at least I wouldn't be a murderer.

Of the poor decisions I was willing to make, that was still off the list.

I led Little Red to sit with me on my settee and she eagerly climbed atop my lap. She boldly tossed her basket and her cloak aside so I had a scrumptious view of her breasts still trying to make their getaway from that too tight binding about her chest.

"A werewolf, huh?" she asked while tracing a manicured finger down my jaw.

"Indeed," I replied. Her curious touch danced over my cheek, lingering at the growing stubble before moving along my neck to trail near my neatly buttoned collar.

"Are you from London?" Her next question came with a lilting tone and the beginnings of laughter.

I quirked a pale eyebrow and answered somewhat harshly, "Not exactly...but you wouldn't know where it was if I told you." I eyed her and watched her stifling her giggles. "Why do you ask?"

"Because then that would make you a werewolf of London!"

The girl burst into obnoxious laughter, quite pleased with her utterly drunken self.

I fought not to sneer at the irritating noise and slid my hands under her skirts in a most distracting fashion until that awful racket quieted and she was instead rocking with the motion of my ministrations, biting at her lip in a way that made me instantly hard.

I growled at the sight and leaned in close to her ear, running my nose and lips across the smooth skin of her cheek. The soft curls of her hair tickled my face and if I closed my eyes and held my breath I could imagine it was my sweet bird instead. I slipped my fingers beneath the edge of Little Red's knickers, slicking them up with her growing wetness and I heard her gasp.

I pictured Hermione above me in that moment.

I imagined it to be her tight body arching into me. I longed for it to be her head thrown back in growing pleasure making not those unbecoming stuttered gulps of breath but her unique sweet hitches of air tinged with her blissful moans.

Unfortunately for me, I still needed air.

I dreaded the moment my torrid fantasy would end and it was with reluctance that I finally exhaled and prepared for her unpleasant perfume to clog my nostrils. I inhaled, bracing myself, but instead of her overwhelming lavender and vanilla an intense scent of an orchard in bloom bogged down my senses.

My eyes shot open and I jerked away from her skin in shock. Little Red groggily started peeling her own eyes open to look at me confusedly when I vaguely registered the sound of my front door exploding off its hinges. I met the face of my prey seconds before she was ripped off of my lap and thrown aside, a feral snarl chasing the action. I should have been more alert and quicker to put my defenses in place, but frankly I was too stunned.

There in my living room, standing over the drunken Muggle girl was my broken girl, my sweet bird, _MY_ Hermione smelling of the fresh rain and warm sun and sandalwood burning its sweet woodsy scent into my brain.

Her hair was as wild as I remembered it and she was wearing her Auror robes. She held her wand out to the side in a white knuckled grip and was bearing down on the other women physically with her lips peeled away from her teeth and a sound trickling from her that shouldn't have come from such a delicate looking flower.

She radiated the heat of an inferno in her rage, her magic caressed my skin with licks of dangerous power, and the dominant display created no quandary about who was in command of their forthcoming altercation.

Sweet Merlin above, she was a goddess.

"Hermione?" Her name slipped past my lips in wonder and that bushy head snapped in my direction. Her snarl didn't lessen when she focused those eyes – striking _golden_ eyes – on me. In fact, I almost think it worsened.

Hermione looked back to the girl who'd made some kind of squeak to foolishly draw my mate's attention. She was on the female in an instant, her free hand coming to clamp painfully around the girl's jaw as she drew her back to her feet. Poor Little Red – who seemed quite sober now – was slammed unceremoniously into the nearest surface and my Autumn day pressed her wand harshly into the base of her skull.

" _Imperio_ ," Hermione hissed into the girl's face, eying her with contempt as the spell took effect. She glanced over her shoulder at me and my completely stunned countenance and sneered. "Take the path to the main road, there is a car waiting. Tell the driver where you live so he can take you home where you will shower and sleep without the company of a man and remember this as a regretful drunken escapade that you will speak of to no one." My witch paused to look at me again before gritting the rest out past a growl, "And never touch this one again or I will gut you and wear your entrails as my trophy."

My eyes widened at the ferocity in which Hermione ordered the girl out of my home and I can admit that it got my blood pumping so rapidly that I may have neglected to notice the fury which still surrounded her when she turned her full attention on me. I stood and got a stiff wand arm aimed dead center at my head.

"Draco Malfoy," her voice boomed loudly, the fine tremble in her solid amber eyes betraying the steadiness of her words. "I've come to return you to our country at the request of the American Ministry. You have overstepped your boundaries by entering this country illegally by both magical and Muggle standards and are to be removed. You have the option to comply and be offered lenience, or you can resist and face the maximum penalty for your infractions."

I was both immensely guilty and hypnotized by those eyes.

I was the cause of them.

That was a wolf's amber and my gods did it look beautiful on her. Hell, _she_ looked beautiful, even if she was a deadly, cocked weapon poised to strike, aimed directly at me. My feet moved towards her without my permission and her wand was soon pressed to my throat. The digging of its point into my flesh was barely enough to pull me out of my trance and I swallowed around the lump it helped form.

"You found me." It wasn't my most graceful observation and the utterance of it startled her.

"Yes," she whispered like it pained her and the grip on her wand faltered.

Seeing the opening, I swept in to pounce and take her to the ground. It was a mockery of our last romp together, less full of passion and much more full of me trying to disarm my witch so she wouldn't disintegrate me in her fiery rage. My weight pinned her easily, my frame dwarfing her own, but how cocky it was of me to assume that's all it would take.

She _was_ a trained and successful Auror, after all.

In a move that had me dazed and disoriented, my Hermione freed her left hand from my clutches and whipped her curled fingers across my cheek savagely enough to draw blood and snap my head to the side. I fumbled my grip on her wand arm but she abandoned its use anyway in favor of bucking her body to dislodge me and reverse our positions. The force in which I hit the floor beneath her knocked my breath from me and made stars burst behind my eyelids. When I opened my eyes, her face was but a hair’s breadth away.

Golden orbs fastened to mine and those lush lips again drew off her teeth in a feral snarl.

I'm sure it was the savagery of her body language that drew me from my stupor and made me respond in kind.

I could feel the growing presence of my other side bristling as it groggily woke and urged me to beat back the apparent challenge she was issuing. Before I even had the opportunity to assert myself she remembered her magic and grit out another incantation that made the floorboards beneath me crack and stretch into something vaguely resembling vines. They whipped out and curled around my wrists and ankles, effectively pinning me and exposing all my vital areas in a way that had the wolf I was protesting adamantly. The more I struggled against the bonds, the tighter they became until they were biting into my flesh and I was sure I felt a sticky moisture spreading across my skin where they wrapped too snugly.

When I finally stopped moving, Hermione sat back where she was seated over my thighs and looked down at me. She was studying me, eyes flitting anxiously over my face and what she could see of my body, but she said nothing.

This wasn't quite the reunion that I'd expected.

"What's the maximum penalty, then?" I gnashed my teeth at her.

"What?" The question drew her out of her thoughts.

"The penalty!" I repeated irritatedly. "I would classify this as 'resisting', so what is it? A lifetime in Azkaban? Try and take me then if it pleases you! Draw and quarter me if you'd like instead! I'm finished with this bullshite, Granger, I can't live like this anyway!"

I wasn't sure how much time had passed or if the moon was coming upon us sooner than I'd expected. Maybe it was just all the fun excitement of having my angry witch throwing me around my home, but I could feel the telltale warnings of the change creeping under my skin. I would transform in these bonds beneath her and it would be best if she were further from my reach just in case they didn't hold but I wanted to argue.

I wanted to fight.

I wanted to do _anything_ with my little witch because it had simply been far too long.

Hermione flinched at the harshness of my words but instead of rising to the bait as she once would, she leaned over me again, crawling up my body until she once again met my sneering face.

"I've been looking for you since that day."

All the fight drained out of me with her quiet admission. I felt her breath fan across my lips and I rumbled a noise that had her eyes fluttering shut with the sound. She dipped closer until our cheeks touched and she nuzzled firmly against me as her fingers probed against the taut muscles of my arms while they made their way up to link with mine.

"You left me..." A distinctly canine whine slipped free from her throat and its effect on me was immediate.

"Hermione--" I began my plea for forgiveness, only to have her suddenly appear in my vision again with a snarl.

"You _LEFT_ me!" Her hands clenched mine angrily, nails biting into the backs of my hands. I couldn't stop myself from enjoying it. "You left _us!_ "

My brow furrowed and I stared at her in question until she seemed to realize what she said and her angry stare darted away. I was about to ask what the hell she meant by that when I took in her hunched posture and regretful look. I choked on my question now forming between us.

"Us. Y-you're a... a-am I a-"

"No," she said sharply before I could finish. She hesitated and still refused to look at me. "I wasn't strong enough to carry..."

I swallowed back the bile as I put the whole picture together.

We'd mated during her most prime time for conception with animal like gusto, zero precautions in place, and I never once thought about what responsibilities I'd possibly left her with beyond the infection.

What the fuck did I think would happen?

What a useless piece of shit I was. No wonder she'd tried so hard to find me.

If I could've crawled under a rock to wither and die in that moment, it wouldn't have been soon enough.

"Hermione..." My voice was thick with regret, amongst other things. "Gods I'm so sorry...I can't—there's nothing I can say-"

"Then don't!"

My mouth snapped shut at the demand and a heartbeat passed before I saw her bushy mane bounce with the shaking of her head and she curled against me again, her nose burying itself into the crook of my neck and shoulder. She was so angry with me, positively livid - rightly so - but with the way she nestled into me like she was coming home to her familiar bed, I knew she'd longed for me as much as I had her.

My poor, sweet witch.

She loosed another soft whine and I ached to hold her but only remembered my makeshift shackles when I went to do just that.

She must have noticed my attempt and remembered them again herself because she released one of my hands to retrieve her wand again to free me for both of our pleasures and it was with a startling chill down my spine that I remembered the moon.

"Stop!"

Hermione looked at me, puzzled like she was fashioning the word into something she understood.

"I—I haven't taken my potion this time."

At my hasty confession, the true weight of it bloomed into understanding in her eyes.

"Draco!" she chastised, "You would have lost control with that girl in your home!"

I winced, expecting much more of a lecture to come but what I received instead was a very dark look full of feral intensity as a _different_ kind of understanding appeared.

"That _girl_ \--" Her voice was a much lower, more sultry pitch. If it hadn't been so venomous, perhaps it would've been sexy.

...of course I'm lying, it was still sexy, even if she looked like she was about to castrate me.

Hermione leaned over me, her nose hovering so close to the skin of my neck and taking a deep pull of the air between us. She moved down my body, a subtle series of sniffs sounding a path down my chest, and a threatening growl dripped from her person.

Those golden eyes peered up at me from the level of my hips and she was baring her teeth once more.

"You smell of _that girl_."

'Of course I do.' I wanted to say. 'She _was_ practically humping me when you'd appeared.' That would have been very ill advised with such an angry witch whose fury was nearly palpable. As it was, electricity charged every aspect of her other scents in a blatant warning.

In another sudden and harsh movement, Hermione was sitting over me again, shrugging out of her Auror robes and working frantically at the buttons of her blouse.

"Hermione," I rasped, "There's no time." That was much more of the reunion I'd hoped for, but right now it was too late. The moon was high in the sky and I could feel it in the tremors starting in my limbs. "You need to--"

"It burns!" she cried desperately.

She was still working at her clothing, fumbling with the closures like she lacked the dexterity for such delicate work and it was then that I realized she hadn't been undressing for my sake at all. My Hermione paused in her work on her blouse before she loosed a frustrated whine and just ripped the thing open, clawing at it until it was off her arms. She barely allowed herself a second to enjoy the breeze wafting in from the outside before she tried the fastenings of her trousers next.

It was there, during her frantic pawing at her own clothing, that I saw her bare flesh revealed to me and it was a far cry from the smooth, unblemished canvas that I'd left it.

Peppered all over her chest and stomach and arms were stretches of lightly pinked nail marks – claw marks – that crisscrossed in multitudes of patterns everywhere the eye could see. At some point, the partial curse I'd left her with drove her body into such a frenzy, she'd tried to tear it open to relieve the pain. Judging by the number of scars on her, this had become a regular occurrence.

Salazar save me, not only had I left my mate to carry and ultimately lose our offspring alone, but I'd left her infected like _this_.

It was a wonder she'd not gone insane already.

It was a wonder I'd not yet gone to Hell.

Hermione had finally freed herself of her blouse and bra only managing to get her trousers halfway down her thighs before she gave up and was frozen where she knelt, back arched and presenting her perfect breasts to me while her fingers curled like talons and her nails ripped into her own skin.

"It's like a fire under my skin! _Please_ , Draco make it stop! Show me how to make it stop!"

Her whimpers of pain along with the hint of metal on the air from her blood leaking from her wounds was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

My own back curled off the ground in time with a loud sickening series of cracks from my ribcage expanding. Pain erupted in my shoulders as they too began shifting and broadening, the muscles in my arms bloating and straining against my expensive tailored suit. The fibers strained, trying to contain my enlarging form but before the sound of shredding cloth filled my ears, I felt small hands patting over me.

I managed to squint down through the pain of my teeth thickening and sharpening in a mouth too compact for their new size to see Hermione, struggling with the task of concentrating enough through her own experience to rip open my shirt. My hands fisted against the agony of my feet cramping and stretching until they burst through my shoes with newly formed claws tipping each malformed toe.

My sweet bird had to stop her attempts to rid me of my suit at one point so she could clutch at her head and scream a sound that was more a howl than a scream at all - a howl, I should note, that sounded much too similar to the sweet sounds that lulled me to sleep the night before to be a coincidence. It lasted a long while and rattled the protective instinct in me that demanded I make whatever was happening to her stop and I growled and thrashed against my bonds. When she came out of it finally, she was panting and she looked at me wildly.

I swear her teeth were just a hair more pointed than I remember.

Her hands found me again after she'd screamed herself raw and she ripped apart my shirt, slacks, and the slim tie I'd sported so fashionably earlier in the evening. They raked over my newly bared skin that was already covered in sweat and prickled with goosebumps. Her nails danced over the ridges of my pronounced ribs, down my abdomen, to bite into the meat of my thighs and she unabashedly positioned herself to more easily rub her still covered sex against my significantly more exposed one.

I tried to warn her off, but my jaw popped and made to accommodate all those larger, pointier teeth that my body was intent on having and only a strangled growl came out instead. By the way she'd been looking at me, though, I highly doubt she would have listened to me anyway.

Now, who was going to do the devouring?

Hermione's nostrils flared and her head tilted in a birdlike fashion in the direction of one of my wrists. My hands had grown, lengthened and were sporting dangerous black claws now. As a result they'd become too large for the magicked floorboards currently cutting into my skin. Her eyes on the prize, she automatically reached for her wand, intent on dispelling them and setting me free.

I managed out a garbled noise which almost resembled a _"no"_ that I was quite proud of.

She hesitated, eyes clearing mildly when she looked to my face which was now more wolf than man. Dropping to lay her bared body to slide across mine, showing no disgust at the rapidly growing pelt, Hermione pressed her face into my neck and breathed me in again. She loosed a becoming sound that made my hips jerk involuntarily and then her little hands were sliding back up into mine while her hot breath tickled a pointed ear.

"Do you know what _you_ smell like, Draco?"

She spoke words from a lifetime ago and it was a low, silken purr sending my instincts into a frenzy. My control was slipping and my claws dug into her flesh, eliciting a moan from the writhing bitch – **_MY_** writhing bitch – above me. Her speech was hypnotic and drew me like a moth to the flame.

"You are the pines...the everlasting pines that comforted me in the dead of winter. You're the moss I longed to lay and stretch upon in the night for my pleasure. You are the calming things that soothe me in the day when I wear this awful weak skin...like mint...sage. You smell of musk... _sex_...and it makes my mind go fuzzy when you're near..."

Her whisper dropped impossibly lower and she pulled my skin between her teeth at my shoulder so sharply that I snapped my jaws at her. She wasn't cowed. Instead, she reemerged in my line of sight and while she looked and spoke as a human, there was very little left in her then. Her scent was that of my sweet Autumn day and also something much more feral and rugged that was calling to me and overriding three of those four basic F's of animal instincts. I growled and snapped at her again and she keened then flashed her own teeth back at me – _clearly sharper_ – before bumping against my muzzle, filling my nose and mouth with a great big gulp of her fragrant hair.

"You smell like my mate...and I want to bathe in your scent until I can't tell where you stop and I begin."

By then my capacity for human thought was barely existent, but by then, she spoke only out of habit and _showed_ me everything I needed to understand by her posturing, her nips and bites, and the rolling pitches of noises she cooed and whined at me.

She'd mumbled a _finite_ before she completely forgot herself and her more complex tongue and the spelled floorboards released their hold of me at once.

My memory took its sweet time coming back to me later, but my last precious thoughts that I took into the blackness that soon swallowed my mind were of my tongue lapping over her self-inflicted wounds, my saliva seeping into her cuts and finishing the job my human form started almost ten years ago, and her delicious body being pinned under mine as we did all those depraved things I'd fantasized about in my cage those years ago.

All those depraved things that I might feel bad about in the morning if she and I were even wholly human anymore.

**_.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-._ **

_Waking hadn't felt so good in a long time._

_Without the potion trying to wrangle my infection, I didn't feel nearly as groggy or ill as I normally did. I was lying in a particularly nice patch of sun streaming through one of my downstairs windows when I moved to stretch my waking muscles and bumped into something at my back. Coming alert quickly, I sat up just enough to glance over my shoulder to see the naked form of my sweet bird curled away from me on our shredded pile of clothing that we apparently used to pad our bed._

_My memories of the previous night strutted back into my mind quite proudly._

_She was mine now, well and truly mine._

_Between the cuts she and I both opened into her flesh and my newest domineering bite on her shoulder she was very much infected with this curse. The beginnings of guilt started bubbling in my gut but the exuberant noises of her pleasure that echoed through my home and my wood last evening were doing well to keep it at bay. My poor Hermione would have to go through the change for real next month...though having seen the scars she'd inflicted upon herself all these years from the symptoms she'd coped with, I almost wonder if it was less cruel to her this way. At least my mate could now be free._

_And I wouldn't leave her this time._

_I reached a hand towards her, wincing with the move and only noticing just then how many welts she'd left on me last night as well. I grinned at them fondly, running my fingers over the healing marks, my grin also reminding me of the gash she'd raked across my face. No, I wouldn't be leaving her this time. She'd thoroughly claimed me as much as I had her._

_Done with admiring her naked back, I placed a hand on her shoulder to rouse her, my face falling immediately at its freezing cold temperature._

_"Hermione?" I asked and when she didn't respond, I shook her more firmly. "Hermione!"_

_With the jostling, her head lolled in my direction and a pair of brown eyes, glazed with death came into view._

_Her neck was ripped open, gaping like a second mouth and the scent of tinny metal hit me like a punch to the face. Her entire front was painted red, the wet splatters of her blood hiding exactly how much of her chest was carved out and missing with its copious coating. The bones of her ribs peeked out from the mangled mess, just a hint of white in all the red like a toddler teething._

_I screamed._

**_.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-._ **

I shot up from my spot on the floor, eyes wide and darting about.

There was no body lying next to my front or my back, just a shredded nest of clothes all ratted up and sweaty beneath my naked hips. Unbelieving, I did another once over of the area and again found no Hermione, bloodied and dead or otherwise.

_A dream then. Oh, thank God._

My racing heart calmed as I realized that, while I was definitely cut up, bitten, and bruised, I was not covered in the remains of my beloved. My beloved who was nowhere to be found.

I crinkled my brow and looked around in confusion.

Was the _whole_ thing a dream?

In my search for her traces, I saw her Auror robes in a heap on the far side of the room.

No. Not _all_ a dream.

I lifted my nose and sought her out as I should have done from the start, though waking from a nightmare that you just ate your girlfriend in a non-pleasurable and quite literal sense has the tendency to throw one off a bit. There, plain as day, were her traces. Clear and strong, even past the scent of sex in the air, and very much nearby.

I followed her heady aroma from my living room to find her close by in the kitchen, rifling through the fridge and what I had left of my sackful of meat. I was silent, creeping just past the threshold but she froze, head coming up suddenly and turning in my direction to look dead into my cautious expression.

I blew out a breath I wasn't aware I'd been holding when her mouth curved in a smile. She looked much less crazed than she did last night, even though she was standing at the icebox completely naked with a hunk of raw bacon held in one palm.

"Good morning.” Her voice was as warm and comfortable as the sunbeam I'd woken up in.

"Morning." Mine was decidedly more haggard, though she looked at me with certain _interest_ after I'd spoken.

Hermione forgot her meal for the moment, padding across the wood to meet me, and absently dropping the chunk of meat onto a counter as she passed it. She stood before me, golden eyes examining me and her smile broadening as she seemed very pleased with the handiwork of her marks that blazed brightly on my pale skin. I rumbled at her inspection and she finally stepped closer, draping her arms over my shoulders and immediately burying her face against my neck.

My hands slid over her skin. So much of her flesh was raised and bumpy from years of scarring. She wore dark bruises at the swell of her hips where I held her while I took her repeatedly the night before and the shoulder that sported my bite from those years ago was inflamed and ragged from a fresh bite that was already healing at a notably accelerated rate – she was absolutely perfect.

I tugged her hips flush with mine and hid my face against her cheek, nuzzling back into her mass of hair.

"I'm so sorry."

Her head jerked away and she made to look at me.

"Draco," she started a warning but I cut her off with a firm kiss that I held until one of us needed to breathe.

I looked into unnatural eyes and stroked a calloused hand over her cheek, her eyelids fluttering at the touch.

"Look at what I've done to you..." My tone was regretful, but not nearly as much as it should have been--it made me feel worse than I already did.

I never wanted this for her.

I tried very hard to avoid it and keep her from it, from _me_ , but a part of me – a very selfish part of me – couldn't be more elated that my mate was here and, for better or worse, was now like me. Wolves are social creatures after all and I'd been so lonely by myself.

"Draco," she cooed, leaning into my touch. "I would never have come if I wasn't prepared for this."

"I've ruined you," I whispered sadly, even as I walked her back to the nearest counter. I pressed her against the surface and rubbed myself against her, the heat of her core – hell the heat of her entire body – drove me wild just at her proximity. "No other man can have you now." My words were half factual, half possessive and she shivered in my arms.

Hermione shook her head and bared her marked neck to me so I set about running my tongue over the wound to soothe the angry, broken skin. She arched and pressed her breasts against me, her taut nipples rubbing across my chest pulling a growl from me and a moan from her.

"You can't leave me." Her hands clenched at my shoulders with her gasped words. "Not again, Draco, you _can't._ "

I kissed every exposed bit of her, holding her tightly to me for the simple pleasure of having her body pressed to mine.

I murmured my agreement over and over, " _Never_. Never again, Hermione--I won’t."

My reassurances seemed to calm her enough and her grip loosened. Once she was again relaxed I went about showing her how much I missed her.

I showed her how much I missed her, once for each and every moon I should have kept her at my side and then some.

It was days before we actually left the cabin again.


	5. Happily Ever After?

We returned home. 

For the most part, nobody really missed me except for Hermione. She was able to get my punishment lessened but it took no small amount of persuasion to the courts by my sweet bird. She used her weight and fame as a war heroine to help me and I found it to be quite nice being cared about enough by someone for them to use their fame and influence for my benefit...without me having to bribe them, that is.

Hermione returned to her job as an Auror and demanded I do something with myself – turns out being a werewolf didn't do anything pleasant for her bossiness.

Who would've thunk it? 

It was just as well, though, because with her motivation and support over the following couple of years, I applied for a position as Potions Master at Hogwarts and was accepted. My first year was slated to begin the Fall after receiving my acceptance letter -- just like old times -- so I set my sights on enjoying my time with my lady before having to relocate to quarters on campus for the term. We worked for some time on arrangements to get her moved to be with me whilst I was there, but nothing had been set in stone for the longest while so there was no day that could be allowed to be taken for granted.

Especially since at the time she was so very swollen with our young.

We'd tried, multiple times, to conceive and found it was more my fault than hers that we had so much trouble after that initial time – far too much dipping into the family inkpot it seems. The Healers said it was a wonder she was ever pregnant in the first place after they'd had a look at me. My poor sweet girl went through so much stress and heartache, but I was there with her this time and finally, with enough persistence and my utmost enthusiasm towards the cause, we did it. It took. And, praise Merlin, there were no issues.

After we found she was finally pregnant, I urged her to request a transfer right away, anything to keep her from running and jumping and gallivanting about with wands and spells that could get her killed or cause her...other loss. Her system was so much stronger since the infection took hold and I certainly expected a fight but to my surprise, she was very amicable to my pleas and arranged a transfer immediately. I suppose it helped that The Boy Wonder was privy to her and, by proxy,  _ my _ secret and pulled some strings as well as encouraged her move for the same reasons I did. She spent a clear majority of her days in her new department sitting behind her desk in the Magical Creatures division, finalizing a petition and proposal on dissolving that ridiculous Werewolf Registry once and for all.

Much as I hated to admit it, Potter had gotten into my good book with that one. Could be worse I suppose...could've been the ginger. He was still around of course, just busy with his new boyfriend – yup, none of us were surprised. We still shared no love for one another but he made my lady smile, so I couldn't begrudge her his company. 

I'd just learned to hide my scowls better these past several months so as not to upset her.

 

* * *

Hermione rose from her desk and I wrapped her cloak around her while she gathered her things.

"Draco, I'm not an invalid!" she snapped her teeth testily but allowed me to finish fastening the garment around her shoulders.

"Of course not," I supplied easily, far too used to her moods by now to let it faze me. "I'm just being overbearingly helpful, is all." I grabbed her files from her, ignoring her sputtering protests and instead guided her hands to wrap around my arm. "Come. We need to get you settled soon."

She growled at me but came along as requested. She loved the attention, just hated to admit it.

We Flooed home to our humble abode nestled far away from the city proper on our own plot of land. We housed ourselves in a simple floorplan in the middle of a dense wood, far enough from prying eyes and civilization that the howls on our monthly engagements wouldn't disturb even our closest neighbor.

I stood in our bottom floor bedroom watching my love fumble with her clothing and grow more and more irate as the minutes passed. Her wedding ring dangled from a long, low hanging chain, as did mine, as we prepared ourselves for one of our last moons together before she was due to pop and she was becoming frustrated with it getting in the way while she disrobed. She seemed to notice me standing there, arms folded, watching and sporting only shorts as I always would back in school.

"Are you going to help or stand there gawking?" She scowled at me, her blouse half stuck at her swollen bosom and only one of her arms free.

I sauntered over, helping her tug the thing off and hummed, "I thought you weren't an invalid."

Another growl from my sweet Autumn day and I chuckled, helping her the rest of the way. Our plush mattress was laid directly on the carpet so she could stay warm and comfortable with minimal efforts that a bed frame would otherwise complicate for our other forms. I padded to the French doors at the opposite end of our suite and opened them to view our private patio leading directly to our woods. Inhaling the crisp smell of the night, I smiled. 

It had rained earlier and it always reminded me of the calming scent of my Hermione.

"I want to go out tonight."

I looked at her sharply over my shoulder, face souring into a stern scowl. 

"No. You're too pregnant to run about."

"Draco--"

"No," I said again and the warning rumble in my tone provided no room for negotiation.

Hermione huffed and flopped heavily onto the mattress, turning her back to me angrily. I sighed at her tantrum and went to her, coming to my knees to kneel at her back. Her shoulders stiffened at my touch at first but I snuffled and snorted at her hair and the nape of her neck until she stopped trying to stifle her involuntary giggles.

"Stop it!" she hissed and smacked me, "I'm mad at you! Don't make me laugh."

"Don't be mad," I murmured into her ear and draped an arm over her waist, rubbing my hand across her rounded belly. "I want you safe."

I felt her shoulders droop a bit and by the sound of her mumble, I could tell she was pouting. 

"Our woods  _ are _ safe."

" _ Hermione- _ -"

" _ Draco _ \--"she mocked me so petulantly I had to laugh.

Still chuckling I buried my face back against her and peppered kisses along her shoulder, nipping at the old scar that had made her entirely mine. 

"I'll stay with you..." I said softly.

She perked up and shifted in my arms so she could look at me with skeptical brown eyes – they'd lost their golden hue and returned to normal after her first change. Pity that. Sometimes she glamoured them back for me when we'd have sex--when we'd have sex and she wanted something that is.

Manipulative little bitch. Merlin, she was wonderful.

"Here? You'll stay here?"

"Yes." I continued nibbling at her shoulder, growling my displeasure when she kept wriggling away to get me to look at her.

"You  _ know _ what will happen if you stay here." Her gaze darkened and she was trying to contain her excitement even though she knew I could sense it.

"Mmhmm," I responded with a smug lilt at the end.

It was just like that, that I found myself on my back pinned to our bed with her hair flowing around us in a curtain of chestnut spirals. Her eyes were gold again, staring down at me with devious intent, and I knew from the ache in my limbs that  _ this _ wasn't a glamour. I allowed her to lord over me for just a moment, her chest rising in rapid pants so her swollen belly and breasts were dancing over my naked torso, but it was too much and I flipped us as gently as possible. She made some adorable kind of yelp-turned-moan when I pulled her to her knees under me and pressed against her bare bottom.

I leaned over her and tugged at her shoulder with my teeth, groaning into her flesh when I realized how ready she was. 

"You know that's not how that works, darling..."

She had barely enough breath to speak as she tilted her head back, pressing her body against mine everywhere she could. The change had started taking her much more quickly than I since she'd gotten pregnant - nature's way of putting her body through as little trauma and stress as it could I suppose - so she was already struggling to speak around thickened, razor sharp teeth. 

"They say when werewolves mate under the full moon--"

"You're already pregnant--" I grunted through sharp snaps of my spine and controlled my amusement at her reaching back with a clawed hand to slice apart my tented and steadily tightening shorts. We both groaned when I was more properly pressed against her exposed sex. "--you won't have pups."

Hermione whimpered through the course her bones and muscles took, lengthening and broadening where appropriate, burying her head in the wad of blankets beneath her and curling viciously clawed hands into the cushion below to try and ease the pain. 

"You'd...ah--" She panted and whined, her voice ragged and broken as it began to fail her. "--better be...right-"

I simply growled into her back and raked clawed hands down her sides to thrust into her rather unceremoniously, seating myself deeply through the remainder of the change. A tremulous, satisfied noise escaped me at the fantastic sensation of her shifting beneath me, in my arms, my mate in all things.

I heard no further argument from my sweet bird. Not that her chords were formed to make many more of them, but you'd be surprised at how disagreeable a pregnant she-wolf could be, even despite a satisfactory amount of thorough fucking.

 

* * *

For the record, they weren't wolves, our twins. Just normal,  _ gorgeous _ – of course they were gorgeous, considering their parentage – half-blooded babies. I’d like to think it wouldn't have mattered if they  _ were _ pups, though. We would have loved them all the same...although it would’ve required a great deal more arrangements.

Spica resembled her mother in nearly every way, including her insufferable know-it-all-ness. 

She was nearly a full year ahead on all the required reading and still participated in many extracurricular activities that, most of the time, involved some petition for this or that. The only notable difference was that her huge mane of curls was a stark white-blond that all the young boys loved to admire. She was a heartbreaker, my Spica...and I was a bone breaker of the lads that admired her too much and too often.

Arcturus was a womanizer, much to his mother's chagrin. But, with the threat of me  _ severing _ that which propelled his desire to mate his young classmates if he didn't treat them with respect, he got better. 

Hermione often remarked at how much he looked like me when I was younger and I would admit to him bearing a striking resemblance to me in my adolescence. It's really no wonder the girls paid him so much attention. As his mum said, though, school was for studying, not snogging.

Both were Gryffindors, the first ever in the entire history of the Malfoy line. Thankfully, they inherited their mother's bravery and courage, though I will take all the credit for their sharp tongues even if they were still only half mine to claim. Sharp tongues, I would add, that resulted in multiple detentions over the years - some even at my own hand. Poor house assignments aside, our babes finished tops of their class and we couldn't have been more proud.

Beyond school, our boy followed in his Uncle Blaise's footsteps and went on travelling and womanizing as respectably as possible for many years. He did eventually find the happiness of settling down with  _ one _ that he loved and made his days worth living. Arc married an adorable little French thing named Régine that he worshiped as his sun and moon and stars. I often addressed her as _ Ma Petite Reine _ .

He hated it. 

Hermione thought it was quite charming, as did the girl. Needless to say, I continued addressing her as such, particularly when my son was within earshot.

My Spica championed nearly as many causes as her mum with her eyes set on taking on a position in the Magical Creatures department under Hermione's tutelage. 

My most heartfelt condolences went out to any stupid enough to put up against the pair of them when united on an issue. Outside of her career, my little girl became enamoured with the youngest Potter boy who was trying his damnedest to follow in his father's footsteps as an Auror. He was too old for her, a quiet sort, shy...and the most proper minded Slytherin boy I'd ever met. I'd decided long before she was born that no one would be worthy of my tiny angel...leave it to another fucking Potter to prove me wrong.

You can't win them all, I suppose.

At least, once it was all said and done, I won when and where it mattered.

Cheers.

**_.-.-.-.-.-._ **

**_.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-._ **

**_...And They Lived Happily Ever After._ **

**_.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-._ **

**_.-.-.-.-.-._ **


End file.
